Man behind India’s data-driven development
Long before data became the new oil, there was a man quietly building the pipelines. Every year on June 29, India celebrates National Statistics Day to honour the birth anniversary of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the statistician who gave independent India the tools to plan, measure and grow.
Born to an academically oriented family in Calcutta in 1893, Mahalanobis went to Britain to study physics and mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where a tutor introduced him to statistics. Upon his return to India, as he started teaching physics, he also began pursuing his interest in statistics.
When his contemporaries were debating ideology and policy, Mahalanobis was working with probabilities and standard deviations, stressing the power of large samples. He went on to establish the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. He utilised statistical techniques to measure crop yields and socio-economic conditions.
Today, India is home to a population of over a billion, where each number hides a story. It was Mahalanobis who first taught India to pay close attention to these stories. He applied statistics to count people, track poverty and help guide a newly independent nation’s future.
Thanks to his vision, India became one of the first developing countries to build a strong system of data collection. His work helped in the creation of the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) — two institutions that continue to guide India in tracking its progress.
His most influential work came through the Planning Commission’s Second Five-Year Plan, where he advocated for the development of heavy industries. His mathematical description of the Indian economy, blending Marxist principles with statistical planning, came to be known as the Mahalanobis Model. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1968.
But Mahalanobis wasn’t just a bureaucrat with a flair for numbers. He was a global thinker, who went on to serve as the Chairman of the UN Sub-Commission on Sampling and helped shape data strategies for several developing nations.
Observed since 2007, National Statistics Day honours his legacy and serves as a reminder that development is not built on dreams alone; it is built on data. As India now debates GDP figures, census delays and unemployment metrics, Mahalanobis’ work reminds us that credible numbers are the foundation of transparency and accountability.
In an age when misinformation travels fast and political rhetoric often overshadows evidence, National Statistics Day also reminds citizens to rely on objective facts and base their political decisions on data, not just noise.
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